Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! It was a short week at work for me, because today and tomorrow are the Spiritual Directors International annual conference, which I’m attending virtually. Very excited to dig into more aspects of this field I’m pursuing with my degree.
This morning, I had my 6-week post-op visit with my surgeon. She was really pleased with how everything looks, and I’m happy with how I’m feeling, so I was in and out in about 15 minutes, which was great.
My husband has been out of town since Tuesday, so I’ve been getting back into the swing of taking Nova out on my own (now that it’s been more than 6 weeks and I’m less worried about getting pulled around by my 50 lb dog). It’s been interesting, I’m a little stiff now that I’ve suddenly increased my activity level, but it’s been lovely weather than past couple of days, so I’ve been enjoying our walks. Poor Nova has been especially clingy the last couple of days with her other parent gone; they’ll be back tonight, so I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.
That’s all for this week, but I’ll leave you, as always, with some Nova content from the week:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! It’s gone from late winter straight to summer here in the Twin Cities this week (it was in the 40s last week, and yesterday we almost hit 90F), which has me feeling very thrown, and grateful that it’s supposed to calm back down to a much more seasonable 60-something in the next couple of days. Still, I’m glad for the sun that’s come out and the feeling of life re-emerging.
I am also re-emerging – this is the final week of my medical leave, and I’ll return to work on Monday. I’m a little nervous, and part of me wishes I had another week or two off. But at the same time, I’m looking forward to getting some structure back in my life. I don’t honestly know if my anxious brain could handle one more unstructured week.
In the meantime, my Comparative Religious Ethics class is wrapping up this week, and I’m trying to get my final paper written before the deadline (tomorrow at midnight). I have accepted (mostly) that it’s not going to be my best work. I think I can get it done in time, and I’m happy to see that I have a bit more focus than I did a couple of weeks ago, at least.
I still have another month of my Spiritual Direction class…because it’s through a different university that’s on a different timeline, that class will end right before my summer classes start up. I’m a little bummed that I won’t have a break between semesters, but at least this is the less stressful class. This summer I’ll be taking a class on Buddhist scriptures and one on early Christian theologies. I’m looking forward to both of them.
As I get further out from surgery, I’m trying to remember to stop and appreciate the feeling of rightness in my body. It feels more like it’s…mine. The fact that I never have to worry about menstrual cramps again (which I occasionally got mild versions of even after almost a decade of taking testosterone), or that if I were to lose access to testosterone, will never need to worry about my period coming back, is giving me an even deeper sense of peace and rightness within my body than I expected. So that’s cool.
I should get back to homework, so I’ll leave it here for this week. As always, here’s your weekly dose of Nova:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! It’s been a decent week – recovery continues to go smoothly and although I’m still figuring out the limits of my energy, I’ve been feeling good overall.
This week has included listening to a handful of audiobooks (all books I’ve read before, because it turns out I have very little capacity for new information right now), knitting, and building a bunch of Lego sets:
The bouquet was a surprise gift from a friend, and was a delight to put together. My husband built the bonsai tree and the T-Rex, and I built the rest. This has been a really great way to keep my hands and brain busy, so I ended up ordering a couple of additional sets, which should get here today!
On Tuesday my cousin and I went to see the new D&D movie. We enjoyed it immensely! I was pretty beat after that excursion, but it was worth it.
Not a lot else to report on at the moment. I’ll leave you, as always, with some Nova moments from the past week:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! I am 9 days post-op from my hysterectomy, and feeling pretty good.
The procedure itself went really smoothly – the whole care team was fabulous, and the only thing that was less-than-stellar was the number of attempts it took to get the IV going, but that was unsurprising (my line is always “I’m not afraid of needles, but my veins are”), and even through that the nurses were really great. I haven’t needed to take anything heavier than ibuprofen for pain since the day of surgery, which was a pleasant surprise. I was feeling so good last Friday (three days after surgery) that I joined my husband and best friend for Nova’s morning stroll around the park across the street – I was a little wobbly when we got back inside, but mostly thought I was fine…until about 5pm that evening when I just crashed. I’ve been taking things a bit more slowly since then and letting myself sleep as much as I feel like I need to.
Really, recovery has been remarkably easy so far – the biggest challenge has been some brain fog and an extremely short attention span. I’ve been blown away by the support we’ve gotten from family and friends – surprise care packages, gift cards, sweet notes, visits…it’s just been really lovely to feel so cared for.
Since I don’t have a whole lot else going on right now, I’ll leave you with some extra Nova content this week – she’s been a trooper with having the household routine totally thrown off.
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday. It’s been another wild week at work, and I’m scrambling to get everything I need to done, because surgery is now officially less than two weeks away. I am excited and anxious and a little bit overwhelmed, but I’ve also been completely bowled over by community support leading up to this, and for that, I am grateful.
Last night I went out for drinks and dinner with two of my best friends, and it was delightful. I’m finally starting to feel more connected here. It took a long time for me to feel like I had connections when we moved to Chicago in 2012; having to leave those deep connections when we moved back to MN in 2021 was hard, and I’ve been struggling a bit to figure out what community looks like for me here. But reconnecting with old friends has been lovely, and I’m tentatively letting down some roots in a handful of other places – an in-person D&D group, a potential songwriting group, my seminary classes…it feels like I’m starting to settle in more, and it feels nice.
I don’t honestly have a ton to talk about this week – a good 90% of my brain is focused on surgery and everything that needs to get done before then, and there’s not a lot else going on. But I’ll leave you, as always, with some quality Nova content:
Hello, dear readers, and welcome to Thursday! It’s been one of those weeks where I’m never quite sure what day it is, for one reason or another. It’s been an ordinary week in some ways and a big week in others.
First big item: I’m done with my semester, which means I’m done with my first year of grad school! It’s wild to me that it’s already been a year. I’m so grateful for what I’ve learned so far and the connections I’m making with classmates and instructors. I’m continuing to have a deep sense of rightness in pursuing this degree, even if I’m still not 100% certain what life after I graduate will look like and how I’ll be using it. The vision of the future is slowly gaining some clarity, and I’ve got time to figure out the details.
The other big news is that the surgery scheduler called and I have a date for my hysterectomy! And…it’s not until March. But at least it’s scheduled, and three months isn’t all that long to wait when I’ve already been waiting basically half my life. It’ll be happening in the middle of the semester, so I’m going to end up taking about a month of medical leave from work to recover, but I’ve gotten that process kicked off and I think everything is going to work out.
I think I’m going to leave it there for this week. As always, here’s your weekly dose of Nova:
Yesterday marks NINE YEARS since I started this blog. I have posted something almost every Thursday for nine entire years. This is the longest I’ve ever stuck with one particular creative project, and I’m proud and also a bit dismayed that I’ve managed to keep it up.
This blog started out nine years ago primarily to record thoughts, feelings, and experiences around gender transition. For the last many years it’s been more of a general story-of-my-life sort of blog, but today, seeing as we’ve hit a major blogging anniversary, I feel like it’s appropriate to circle back to that original purpose.
Early last week, I had a consultation with an ob-gyn to discuss getting a hysterectomy. I’ve known I wanted to do this since before I knew I was trans. I was nervous going into the appointment, but it went really well.
Since then, I’ve gotten the requisite letters of justification for insurance purposes from my therapist and my primary care doctor, and the surgical orders have been put in; now, I’m just waiting on their scheduler to call me. In a perfect world, I’ll have this done by the end of the year!
It’s wild to think that this thing I’ve wanted to do for well over a decade is immanent to the point that it could be just weeks away. I’m not super looking forward to the recovery, but thankfully I have a great support network here. Mostly, I’m just very excited by the prospect of being done.
In non-transition news, we got almost 6 inches of snow on Tuesday, and Nova is over the moon about it. I’ll leave you with this video of her in her happy place:
Buckle up, dear readers, because this week I’m returning to the roots of this blog and talking about my life as a trans person.
This year, at least 28 states are voting on anti-trans legislation. There’s a lot that’s fucked up about this. Just this week in Arkansas, a bill was passed that bans gender-affirming healthcare for minors. The (Republican) governor vetoed the bill, calling it “vast government overreach.” The legislature overruled his veto with a dishearteningly large majority vote. Make no mistake – this bullshit that’s marketed as “protecting children” will actually do devastating harm. Taking away a trans child’s access to affirming healthcare isn’t going to make them not trans. It will just make them miserable. (I will again post this Twitter thread that makes some really good points about all of this.)
Today at work our Pride ERG hosted a half-hour hangout where people could come and sit with each other and with our feelings about what happened in Arkansas. I’m glad I went, and I appreciate the other people who showed up, but even as I felt seen in a way that was validating, I felt…exposed, in a way that was less comfortable. I am the only trans person I know of at my company, and I’m out as nonbinary there. Most people at work respect my pronouns (which are they/them, by the way, which is at least the third time my pronouns have shifted in the last decade, which I am not apologizing for, because identity is fluid and can be complicated) – no one is actively disrespecting my identity, but sometimes people forget. I do my best to educate people and stand up for myself and for the people around me. And it’s exhausting.
Inextricably tied to all of the feelings I’m having about trans identity being up for legislative debate are feelings around bodily autonomy. One of the hardest and most beautiful lessons I have learned in the ten years since I started coming to terms with the fact that I was not, in fact, cisgender, is that my body is my home. It’s a home that I struggled for years and years to relate to, until I realized it was mine to change and mold into a shelter I could feel comfortable in (at least some of the time). This has shown up in big ways – the changes from testosterone, and having gender-affirming top surgery – but it’s also shown up in smaller ways. I can paint my nails. I am currently sporting what feels like a super queer haircut that I love. In the middle space between those extreme examples, I can get tattoos.
I knew I wanted tattoos by the time I was in my teens, if not before. I got my first one eleven years ago this month, just a couple months before I turned 22. It’s a trinity knot on my right forearm. I wanted a reminder that the parts of myself that so often felt fractured – body, mind, and spirit – were all part of the singular being that was me. Four years later, I got three tarot cards tattooed on my left forearm: the Hermit (because I am an introvert and I believe in both finding my own truth and in lighting the way to help other people find theirs), the Ace of Wands (because I am a person with a lot of creative energy who finds joy in making beautiful things), and the Nine of Pentacles (which is my constant reminder that my body is the home that I am creating for myself). A couple of years after that I got a few more, which had less in-depth meanings, in some ways (there’s a leaf on my right ankle that I got because it was pretty; I have a classic Winnie-the-Pooh illustration on my right arm, and an earth/air alchemical symbol that reminds me to stay grounded and breathe under that), but all of them were ways to exercise my bodily autonomy.
On Tuesday, I got my sixth (or eighth, depending on if you count the tarot cards as one tattoo or three) tattoo:
A black and grey tattoo of a small dragon clutching a 20-sided gaming die – we’re adding color in a few weeks!
D&D and other tabletop roleplaying games have been a big part of my life over the past few years – through them I’ve connected with people I might never have met otherwise, and I’ve found so much joy in collaborative storytelling and getting to play with my friends as an adult. Just in the last month I started DMing my first game, and it’s been a blast. I knew that I wanted a D&D-themed tattoo to capture some of that. I told the artist (who has now done the majority of my tattoos) that I wanted “some sort of dragon and dice situation,” and I could not be happier with what she came up with. This little dragon clutching its d20 is better than anything I’d envisioned ahead of time.
As I was chatting with the artist during the tattoo, I mentioned that as a teenager I had sketchbooks full of dragons. I drew them because no one could tell me “that’s not how a dragon looks” – it was one of the things I loved about fantasy. She asked me what drew me to dragons, and I honestly didn’t have an answer at the time, but I’ve continued to think about it since then. I think there’s something about the wildness of them that called to me. In all the fantasy novels I read, there was this sense that you couldn’t really tame a dragon. Even in the ones where dragons and humans got along, it was because the dragons chose to treat the humans gently. There was something about that power that was appealing, for a whole host of reasons I’m sure I could delve into with a little help from my therapist.
Last fall, I wrote an autobiographical song that I kind of set aside after that songwriting session was over, but the chorus has been stuck in my head the past couple of days:
I’m building this wondrous body, creating my home Something more suited to housing my curious soul I dress it up in ink, in wool, and in leather I know this act of creation is a holy endeavor
I don’t know that I have a huge sweeping point in all of this, except to say that trans people (like all people) are sacred, and the act of self-determination and self-discovery is a holy endeavor. I was raised with the idea that humans are created in the image of the Divine, and while I have a lot of complicated feelings about the picture of Divinity I was raised on, I think trans people are every bit as much a reflection of the Divine as anyone else. I am angry and sad and disheartened that there are so many people in power in the world right now who refuse to see that.
I was so focused on my ER adventure last week that I completely missed the fact that last Thursday was my 6 year HRT anniversary. I’ve been on testosterone for six whole years! Which, incidentally, means this blog will hit its six year anniversary in a couple of weeks. I’ve blogged almost every week for six years, which is mind-boggling to me.
My therapist is constantly reminding me that I need to take time to recognize and celebrate progress. I’m not good at this. So today’s blog will attempt to do a bit of that.
A lot has changed in the past six years. My life has gained a welcome level of stability that wasn’t there before. I’m in a better place mentally than I was then. I had no idea when I started this part of this journey what would happen with my family. It’s been a trip…but I’ve ended up in a largely positive space. So that’s cool.
In addition to those personal anniversaries, there’s another important one coming up: Sunday will mark nine years since my partner and I went on our first date.
NINE YEARS. In two years we’ll have been together for a third of my life. It hasn’t always been easy, but it’s always been worth it.
In therapy this week we talked about how after three or so years in a relationship, we shift from thinking about that person as a new person in our lives to thinking of them as family. That means that unless we consciously work to rewire whatever dysfunctional attachment patterns we developed in our family of origin, we’ll perpetuate those in our family of choice. (On the one hand, breaking those dysfunctional patterns is overwhelming and difficult, but on the other, what a cool opportunity to strike out into new territory!) One of the things I’m working on is letting myself be cared for, even when I feel like I’m inconveniencing the people around me. I’m so grateful that I have a partner who’s so thoughtful and intentional about making sure I’m cared for.
What about you, friends? Any anniversaries, big or small, happening in your lives these days? I’d love to hear about them!
Hello, dear readers, and apologies that this post is going up late – it’s been a weird week, and I nearly forgot what day it was.
I wrote last week about my grandfather’s passing, my complicated feelings around our relationship, and my anxiety about going to the funeral, which was last Saturday. I am pleased (and still a little surprised) to report that going to the funeral, while hard and sad, was actually a remarkably healing experience.
My extended family, including the folks I was most nervous about seeing, all either called me Alyx or avoided names altogether. I heard one aunt use the wrong pronouns once, but she corrected herself smoothly and moved on. I didn’t feel othered at all – I was included every step of the way. I felt…well, like I had a family, in a way that I haven’t felt in a while.
I know that some of the responsibility for my prior estrangement from my family is on me. I chose to pull away rather than engaging with them. I still feel like I had good reason to (I didn’t have the mental or emotional resources to manage their potential responses when I first came out), but I also recognize that I did not give them a chance to prove me wrong about how I thought they would react to my coming out.
I’m also 100% certain that a large part of why the weekend went so well has to do with my grandmother. She and I don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, but since we reconnected this spring, she’s done a phenomenal job of showing up and showing me love and respect, which I am doing my best to return. I think the fact that my nearly-92-year-old grandmother can manage to call me Alyx and meet me where I’m at meant that no one else had any sort of excuse to do otherwise.
It was a long day (I drove from Chicago to northeast Iowa on Friday evening, and back to Chicago on Saturday evening after the funeral), but I’m glad I went. I was genuinely disappointed that I wasn’t able to stick around and spend more time with my family (it was snowing in Iowa by the time we finished lunch, and I decided to head straight home rather than risk icy roads as it got later), which I was not expecting.
One of my aunts, as we were saying our goodbyes, gave me a long, firm hug before telling me she was so proud of me, and that if anyone wasn’t, that was on them, not on me. I still well up a bit every time I think about it.
I guess what I’m saying is people are surprising, complicated creatures, and I need to do a better job of remembering that rather than jumping immediately to worst-case-scenario planning when I interact with people who I expect to disagree with. (I’m also grateful that this funeral was not a place where politics came up, because I’m sure a lot of the warm fuzzies would have been…well, less warm and fuzzy.)
Accidental Fudge 